Since Michael Dahlquist's unfortunate, untimely, and unnecessary passing last summer, my affinity for his work in Silkworm has only grown. The band showed no signs of losing steam, growing bored, or interpersonal tension, and likely could have put out excellent records until their grandkids started their own bands in tribute. It didn't surprise me when Tim Midgett and Andy Cohen decided to forge ahead with a new band, but I nevertheless approached Bottomless Pit with a slight bit of apprehension. Would I be able to get over Dahlquist's absence? Would they?

My answer didn't come with Bottomless Pit's performance in Boston this past Friday, which I missed in part because of that apprehension (but mostly because of the inflated Boston ticket price for headliners Magnolia Electric Company), but with the band's posting of four songs on their web site. Recent memory can't produce a hand-hits-forehead moment like this one. These songs are superbly crafted and as moving as anything Silkworm recorded. Judging from the elegiac sweep of "Human Out of Me" and the restained optimism of the 1980s New Order vibe of "The Cardinal Movements," Tim Midgett takes this turn as a chance to reflect upon the past, musically and personally. "Those dreams are neverending / I know it's always hard to hear," Midgett sings with stoic grace. Andy Cohen's "Dead Man's Blues" lurks and seethes with his usual vigor, highlighting his interplay with newfound guitarist Midgett, while sighs "I saw the connection there / On the way down / Missed our connection there / On our way down" before a surge of cathartic guitars. The new rhythm section—former Seam drummer Chris Manfrin and .22 bassist Brian Orchard—fills in admirably, trading off Dahlquist's enormous footprint and Midgett's expressive bass lines for a more streamlined approach.

My soundtrack for reading in the BC library has typically been Tarentel's aptly titled singles compilation, Ephemera. Unlike their recent work, in which texture and atmosphere form the backbone of many songs, early Tarentel tracks (namely this compilation and the stellar From Bone to Satellite) build songs up from the smallest available pieces, whether a stray bit of feedback or a softly picked note, gradually forming sturdy, expressive post-rock songs and letting them evaporate into the original miasma. "The Waltz" might be the finest of these tracks, a crescendo so glacial one might not even notice the arrival (or departure) of the drums.

That said, the second track on the new-ish Tungsten74 album, Binaurally Yours (see comments section of previous entry), happens to be titled "Waltz." And you know what? It destroys that Tarentel song. Absolutely kills it. Everything that I've loved about Tungsten74 has been distilled into twelve-and-a-half minutes of psychedelic, progressive post-rock, cabinets stocked full of carefully controlled feedback and surging melodies. The biggest potential caveat for a shorter, digestable Tungsten74 record is that it risks crippling their foremost strength—a compelling tendency to wander headlong into huge expanses of sound—but "Waltz" represents the best possible result of this shift from the epic travels of the two-disc Aleatory Element. All I'm capable of doing right now is replaying the section from the 9:20 mark until the end of the song, over and over, jaw agape from both the locked-in groove and the swirling layers of its aching yet propulsive melodies. It wouldn't be fair to expect two full discs of songs this tightly crafted, but Tungsten74 is at work on another album.

I'm both mad at myself for not hearing this album earlier and thrilled that penciling in a spot for this record in my year-end list was completely warranted.

According to Ghost Wars’ MySpace page, their album is almost finished. Ghost Wars, for those caught unaware, is Arlie Carstens’ post-Juno project with Eric Fisher and a rotating cast of additional musicians. The three tracks posted are unfinished demos, but they offer considerable promise in terms of aesthetic variance and songwriting depth. I still don’t know when their album might actually be released—the fear is that this becomes my personal “follow-up to Loveless” dilemma—but any news is great news. I mention this because I’m going to list my top 20 albums of the year to this point, and if Ghost Wars were to be released up to and including December 31, 2006, everything would likely shift down one spot.

Other potential caveats include my inexplicable inability to grab the new Tungsten74 (Binaurally Yours), my baited breath for the new Pinebender album (Working Nine to Wolf), the forthcoming Life and Times EP, Mt. St. Helens’ Of Others (pending a new label; Divot folded), the next Lights Out Asia (Tanks and Recognizers), and the potential that something great comes out that I wasn’t even anticipating. This list is organized in tiers (starting with 20–15) and commentary is sparse. It’s August, so there’s a lot of listening (and purchasing) to come before December, but keep these in mind.

Isis and Aereogramme - In the Fishtank 14
Judah Johnson - Be Where I Be
Mock Orange and the Band Apart - Daniels EP
Norfolk and Western - A Gilded Age
Vetiver - To Find Me Gone

Mock Orange has been my band of the year for 2006, but that’s primarily been because of the First EP and Mind Is Not Brain, not this grab bag of a split EP. Judah Johnson resides on my new favorite label, Flameshovel, but I’m torn over whether this record shifts them toward AOR yearning (see also: Jeremy Enigk’s World Waits) or more successful songwriting.

Channels - Waiting for the Next End of the World
Hammock - The Sleepover Series Vol. 1
Radio Dept. – Pet Grief
Russian Circles - Enter
Timeout Drawer - Alone EP

Hammock’s excursion into strictly ambient music is a success, even if that means it’s less memorable than their other records. The synth-pop of the Radio Dept. is more oriented for successful singles (“The Worst Taste in Music,” “Every Time”) than consistency, but they give it a shot.

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness - Fear Is on Our Side
Jesu - Silver EP
Mission of Burma - The Obliterati
Nina Nastasia - On Leaving
Paik – Monster of the Absolute

Paik’s album is a close second to The Orson Fader in their catalog; cutting the expanse makes it easier to digest, but eliminates some of the appeal. Jesu’s Silver EP emphasizes the shoegazing tendencies of the full-length to the absolute benefit of the material.

Chin Up Chin Up – This Harness Can’t Ride Anything
Cursive - Happy Hollow
Errors - How Clean Is Your Acid House?
Isis - In the Absence of Truth
TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain

Chin Up Chin Up was a big surprise—the title track and “Water Planes in Snow” had me absolutely hooked—and as an added bonus, the vinyl comes out on Flameshovel. Errors is only available on import from Mogwai’s label, which is unfortunate because their electronic-enhanced post-rock is far more memorable than Mogwai’s Mr. Beast. I need to hear the TV on the Radio more in its “official” track order, but the songs are excellent however you arrange ’em.

In other news, I had no clue that Zach Barocas of Jawbox fame wrote a book of poetry.

I caught This Flood Covers the Earth on Tuesday at the Lily Pad in Inman Square (an art space that doubles as an independently operated venue). I’d been in contact with their singer, Charlie, for quite a few years now (he was once in a band with Western Homes/Mark T. R. Donohue, famed baseball blogger). Aside from a few telling exceptions, I am neither a huge fan of or well versed in contemporary hardcore music, but This Flood quickly became one of those very exceptions. After a brutal opening salvo, moody instrumental passages and dynamic shifts evocative of Drive Like Jehu and June of ’44 defined the edges of their genre overlaps and helped sharpen the teeth of those sweaty, guitar-swinging bursts of aggression. Their split LP with tour mates Lanterns actually captures a good amount of the energy and expertise displayed live. I wish I could comment more on Lanterns (or headliners Motionless), but I spent most of their sets outside of the Lily Pad, talking to Charlie and the men behind History Major Records (one of whom is, appropriately enough, entering the graduate History department at BC). I highly recommend catching these bands on the last month of their tour and/or picking up the split release.

When I got home from that show, I found out TV on the Radio and Yeah Yeah Yeahs were playing a free show courtesy of WFNX in downtown Boston on Thursday. I’d seen both bands on separate occasions at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, a considerably more intimate environment for rock concerts, but free is free, particularly in Boston. TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain (released domestically in the fall of 2022) is on the short list of 2006 records I recommend sans qualifiers, but a muddy mix didn’t help their live set. I’d say that they’re more of a studio band if I didn’t recall how stunning the rocked-out version of “Blind” from the club show was, but “Wolf Like Me,” “Staring at the Sun,” and “Dirty Whirlwind” were highlights. For their next record, I hope the guitar players learn another trick beyond “fast indie strumming,” but that’s at least thirty years away.

I didn’t particularly care for Show Your Bones, the most recent Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, but it’s tough to deny their charisma or execution in the live setting, even if some of the songs are duds. Nick Zinner’s guitar tone puts most bands’ to shame, while Karen O. does justice to her current “space prostitute from Blade Runner” attire. Not that I brought my camera, but she has thankfully toned down her destructive impulses toward electronic equipment since I saw them as the first band in a four-band set (with Girls Against Boys headlining). I could have done without the slow-jams near the end of their set, but the encore of “Y-Control” rewarded my patience.

If WFNX decides to continue this trend of having former Touch and Go bands play free shows at Government Center, perhaps the aforementioned GVSB, the Jesus Lizard, Slint, Polvo, Seam, and Big Black would make an excellent line-up. Hell, it might even continue past 8:30pm.

I feel like mentioning this excellent video stream of a recent GVSB concert. The band is playing the Touch and Go anniversary party, but a warm-up/cool-down/anything show in the Boston area would be amazing: one more time with feeling/style.

Dusty’s ExplodingNow! is my current must-read, particularly his ongoing top 500 albums project. Knowing something about assigning numerical values to massive amounts of music (and even more about not finishing such endeavors), I’m a bit surprised that he’s starting at the top of the list, but he’s still going strong and not looking back. I’ve always thought that we have fairly similar tastes in music, stemming not just from our formative years on the Hum mailing list and a slew of tangential alignments, but this project underscores some of our primary rifts. Naturally, I’m playing along at home to some extent, trying to merely come up with a list of my top 500 albums (in no particular order, although guessing the top spot would be a rather easy task). If I ever reach that number, maybe I’ll come up with a competing project, but at this point, sitting at 145 albums and having other projects in the queue (no, I haven’t forgotten about 1000 Songs), odds are against it, so perhaps you should enjoy ExplodingNow’s.

Of course, that won’t prevent me from discussing that hypothetical list. One of the most difficult artists to place on the list would be Silkworm, as I’m a fan of nearly their entire catalog and my preferences have shifted from year to year. Firewater, for instance, never clicked until this past year, when “Drag the River” opened up the album for me in a way that the first half never could. Since that point, Firewater has been my decided favorite of theirs, with Andy Cohen’s solos having a profound effect upon how I view the rest of their catalog. It’ll Be Cool remains in the upper echelon of their albums alongside Libertine and Lifestyle, but the a-side of Developer ranks among their finest moments as well. What about Italian Platinum, Blueblood, and In the West? I’m not sure if they’d make it as albums, but within a sampler of Silkworm, they could easily be heartily represented. Unlike Pavement (a early comparison made primarily because of the nod to “In the Mouth a Desert” in “Raised by Tigers”), whose catalog has settled in terms of my preferences (Crooked Rain a definite first, then Slanted followed closely by Wowee Zowee and the Watery, Domestic EP), I’m not sure how I’ll feel about the current second-tier Silkworm albums in a year or two. But this situation makes me appreciate them even more as a band, not less. (Silkworm’s final release, Chokes, is closer to an EP in execution and obviously not what the band intended to issue, but I await it nevertheless. Bottomless Pit, however, is Andy Cohen and Tim Midgett’s new band, and I hope I’ll be able to catch them in September.)

In non–obsessive list making news, I sense another redesign afoot, since the current layout utilizes approximately 40% of my new laptop’s screen resolution. I should also have far more time to actually use my site now that I won’t have to hover over the screen reset button anticipating my backlight flickering off.

The NHL season is over and, to the dismay of most purists, the Carolina Hurricanes have won their first Stanley Cup. Yet I’m pleased by this result. Given that I watched three of the finals games with die-hard Edmonton fans, one might think that I was cheering against the Oil to be contrarian, but I went into the series not leaning heavily in either direction, since my team (the Detroit Red Wings) and my surrogate team (the Buffalo Sabres) were out of the running. But within the first five minutes of game one, however, I recalled and embraced my ire against Edmonton for knocking out the Wings in the first round. I’d cheered against them when they went on to play San Jose and then Anaheim, so why stop now? All I could think about in game one was how much I hated Fernando Pisani for choosing the Red Wings series to emerge out of his third-line grinder role, how Dwayne Roloson shouldn’t have been the latest in a long series of goaltenders to stand on his head to beat the Wings, and how Mike Peca gets away with more game-changing would-be infractions than almost any other player in the playoffs. So Carolina got the huge boost of my tepid support and took it all the way to the Cup.

Unlike the 2004 playoffs when I had a clear-cut preference, having followed Tampa Bay’s Martin St. Louis since his electrifying college days at Vermont and having loathed Calgary’s Ville Nieminen from his first cheap-shot antics on the Avalanche, I didn’t have any clear-cut favorite players in this series. I certainly like watching Erik Cole play (a remnant of the Hurricanes’ previous finals appearance against the Wings in 2002) and have nothing but respect for Glen Wesley and Ron Brind’Amour, but it’s hardly the same situation. Cole didn’t even dress until game six, but the stunner of his return—a return that team officials insisted would not occur—was worth the wait. The Oilers dominated that game, a home game in front of their boisterous crowd, but the Hurricanes rebounded well for game seven. Who knows what would have happened if Roloson could have played the entire series, but I’m quite impressed that Edmonton pushed the series to seven and made the wise decision not to start Ty Conklin in game two. It was an exciting, if frequently sloppy series (games two and six were blowouts), and a nice way to end a semi-triumphant return for the NHL.

Back to the braying purists, I’m primarily sick of this “Tampa Bay, now Carolina! Guh! Boo!” rhetoric of the Cup needing and deserving to be in Canada or an American city with a history of success. Gary Bettman is too committed to his (admittedly overblown) ’90s relocation and expansion project to contract every team south of the Washington Capitals, so these people might as well face the facts. There are six Canadian teams (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Calgary) and not counting Californian teams, there are seven teams from Southern, typically non-hockey locales (Phoenix, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Florida, Nashville, Atlanta, Dallas). If the new NHL is a level playing field, we’re bound to see those Southern teams in the finals slightly more often than Canadian teams. And thanks to the salary cap, those Canadian teams can no longer gripe about the burden of small market budgets. Would the Oilers have made it to the playoffs (let alone the finals) without the acquisitions of Pronger and Peca? Rather unlikely, given the team’s goaltending difficulties prior to the acquisition of Roloson.

As for the specifically Canadian complaints about their country deserving the Cup, I hold no sympathy pains for the Edmonton Oilers aside from Roloson’s untimely game one injury. They’ve won five Cups in the twenty-six years since moving over from the WHA. They’re the only team from the WHA to win a Stanley Cup in their original location and not to relocate during the 1990s (sorry Hartford, Winnipeg, and Quebec). During their dynasty, they had the single greatest player in NHL history (Gretzky), one of the greatest leaders in NHL history (Messier), the greatest European goal scorers in NHL history (Kurri), the second-highest scoring defenseman (Coffey), and a Hall-of-Fame goaltender (Fuhr). Let’s put that in contrast with the largely ignored prior history of the Hurricanes as the Hartford Whalers. Growing up with the Whalers as my number two team behind the Red Wings, I know all too well the deficits of both their history and roster. Ron Francis is one of the NHL’s all-time highest scorers, but remarkable consistency is hardly synonymous with electrifying energy. Gordie Howe’s father-son tour hardly compares to the finest years of Gretzky’s career. Pat Verbeek, Brendan Shanahan, and Kevin Dineen are all fine players, but the Whalers only won a single playoff series in their history. Compound this with having an owner set on moving the team (Peter Karmanos) and being a comparative small-market team within driving distance of the major New York and Boston franchises. So I should feel sorry for the team with five Cups, Gretzky, and the lone unmoved survivor of the WHA? Good luck with that one.

For all of those fans decrying how Carolina will forget about this victory once their team is awful and isn’t making the playoffs, I direct you to the Oilers’ mid-’90s attendance figures, which were in the bottom five for the league from ’93–’94 until ’96–’97, when they once again made the playoffs. Fans anywhere will be excited about their team making it to the finals and disappointed when their team has an abysmal season. The New York Knicks, Chicago Cubs, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Green Bay Packers have suffered through horrible seasons without wavering fan support, but these are aberrations. For expansion/relocated franchises, a brief taste of success, like the Florida Panthers’ surprising appearance in the ’96 finals, isn’t enough to convince fans that ownership is capable of putting a competitive product on the ice. Carolina making the finals in 2002 and winning the Cup in 2006 should establish a foundation for a long-term fan base. Look what it did for the Oilers when they won the Cup in their fifth season in the NHL. Cam Ward, Erik Cole, Eric Staal, Andrew Ladd, and the third overall pick from last year, Jack Johnson, are all young enough to form a fine core of players, obviously not the same talent level as the ’80s Oilers’ core, but substantial enough to insist that this team won’t fall apart like the hodge-podge expansion make-up of those ’96 Panthers.

The current Canes fans, fronted by Mac from Superchunk/Portastatic (in the indie rock world, at least), may embrace the “redneck hockey” tagline, but ironically, they were the team in the finals who never dressed an enforcer during the regular season or playoffs. Carolina played with speed and physicality, never resorted to the neutral zone trap (even stealing the Wings’ left-wing lock system), made the right moves near the trade deadline, and have bona fide up-and-coming stars for the NHL to bank on (sorry Fernando Pisani). My biggest knock against them, besides lucking out of series with the Canadiens (Koivu eye-gouging) and the Sabres (blueline massacre), is that they continue to have a tone-deaf cheerleader sing the anthems. I may not have cared either way when the series begin, but for an adopted team that ended up going on to win the Stanley Cup, I’d wager that one could do a lot worse than the Hurricanes. So hockey purists, please stop crying yourself to bed over the Cup residing in a warm-weather city. Again.

Since my early record shopping days at various Rhino Records locales throughout the Hudson Valley, I’ve loved rifling through dollar bins in search of overlooked treasures or misplaced greats. The main Rhino find I can think of off the top of my head was Thingy’s To the Innocent, one of Rob Crow’s better efforts. Particularly back in high school, when I actually sold CDs back in order to fund the purchase of new discs, every dollar counted. I couldn’t necessarily hear a record from start to finish before purchasing it, so being able to take a chance on a hunch or a whim was refreshing. My record collection is littered with near hits from the dollar bin—discs no one would buy back, so I kept—but I look at these as fond mementos of a few hours spent looking at everything a given record store had to offer.

Reckless Records in Chicago not only surpassed Rhino’s dollar bin selection, but the two and a half hours between their locations and Champaign compelled me to pick up everything that triggered the slightest nerve for fear that I would never see it again. With a campus job in tow, I was fine with dropping seventy five bucks on a single trip, and I wanted to bring home as much as I possible could. The weighty bags typically contained a few full-price CDs, a smattering of lesser-priced used discs, a handful of cheap ’80s vinyl, and a lining of dollar bin selections. Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis typically forced me to go for the higher priced material, but I remember one time when all seven inches were on sale for a buck apiece. I recall buying around thirty of them.

Even Parasol Records—the bastion of my full-price indie rock purchases even before learning of Rhino Records—got in on the act when they moved to their Griggs Street location, setting up a nice sized dollar bin which provided a rare moment of finding what I was actually looking for in Sixto’s lone, self-titled album. This set-up was especially great because Record Swap, a longtime Urbana store, charged three (yes, three) dollars for selections from their wall of forgotten ’90s indie rock, a price I was largely unwilling to pay. Parasol deserves even more credit for the lasting effect of their old print catalogs, with one line descriptions of every band that I circled and memorized for future reference. Between these catalogs, the Trouser Press Guide to ’90s Rock, and recommendations from friends and magazines, I knew what I was looking at when I skimmed through a huge bin of cheap discs.

Throughout these adventures in dirtying my fingers and bolstering my stacks, I started noticing the trends, the various discs that would be in every dollar bin in a given city or in every dollar bin in every city; Agnes Gooch, I’m talking to you. Occasionally I even felt bad for such bands, but typically the response was more of a “How did they get this many CDs pressed?” I could understand why Bush’s Razorblade Suitcase, R.E.M.’s Monster, every Sugar album, and every Candlebox album litter higher priced sections in used stores (I blame record store hubris for not putting such frequent residents in the cheapest of cheap bins, or, preferably, their own landfill), but it was always the unknown bands, the complete failures of the post-grunge major label signing rush, that baffled me the most.

When I found In Your Ear in Harvard Square and its massive, double-layered dollar shelf, I figured that this finally might have lent some depth to the largely disappointing array of Boston record shops. Newbury Comics is passable for relatively new material, CD Spins (or whatever various locations are now called) typically has a few worthy used selections, and Twisted Village is excellent for when I want some bona fide psych-rock (which, sadly, is not that often), but the dollar bins attached to these and other stores have been small and underwhelming. In Your Ear took all of my prior assumptions about the residents of dollar bins and amplified them a thousand times.

Have you been searching for the complete discography of Claw Hammer? What about seven copies of Dig’s Dig? Do you need copies of their other material as well? What about Lucas maxi-singles? Would you prefer not to recognize the band name at all? Wait a second, everybody remembers the self-titled Tesla album, right? I bet you need that in the most carnal way possible.

If I had taken notes, that paragraph could go on forever.

The best thing I found in that bin was a promo of Knapsack’s This Conversation Is Ending Starting Right Now, and unlike my pre-.mp3 willingness to pick these up in order to hear an album on the cheap, there is almost no reason (besides supporting a record store in the most middling way possible) to pick up a cardboard sleeve–encased disc anymore. Perhaps at some point I would have buckled to the whim of hearing TripleFastAction’s first album on six different stereos (an experience akin to the Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka, I can only imagine), but I slinked up the stairwell with nothing in hand, passing a crate of absolutely free Barbara Streisand LPs on my way to the door. There’s even another In Your Ear location over by the Paradise in Boston University turf, but unless I have some inkling for the complete output of J-Bird Records, I will not enter it.

I have two theories on this situation. First, In Your Ear had its heyday in approximately 1994. Since then, they’ve restocked the absolute bare minimum to remain open—a copy of the Killers’ Hot Fuss on LP, for example—while continually picking up marginal vinyl selections from estate sales and Goodwill stores and overpricing any album that seems remotely intriguing. (Big Black’s Songs About Fucking for fifteen bucks? No thanks.) The dollar bin filled up in 1998 and local residents simply knew better than to look through it. It may already be categorized as a landfill, but the store owners refuse to put the permit on display just in case someone comes in desperately searching for their college roommate’s frat brother’s cousin’s band, which put out one record on Atlantic in 1995, selling 1,600 copies of their 100,000 copy pressing.

Second, I’m finally tired with the process of record shopping. Whereas in 2000 I could easily outlast any companions on trips to record stores, at this point I just don’t care to see everything a given store has to offer. I’d rather find a way to purchase a disc new from a band or a store I like (Parasol, Tonevendor, even Newbury Comics in a pinch) than to pick it up for eight or ten bucks used from a store I dislike. Nine years of dollar bin shopping has taken its toll on me, sure, but I’ve also probably hit the reasonable limit of forgotten ’90s indie rock discs that my CD cabinet will hold without vomiting them out in disgust. Thanks to .mp3s, I purchase discs that I know I like instead of discs I think I might like because they’re on a familiar label or feature the first guitarist of a band whose second record showed promise. Taking chances requires a considerable amount of time and patience and results in more disappointments than crowning achievements, so I’m more willing to play it safe, even if it means paying more per disc.

Of course, there’s a third option in which this is just a phase and I’ll grow out of it, but I’ve already seen used book shopping surpass used CD shopping in my priority list. The best thing about buying used books is that virtually all of the authors I care about are dead, meaning that unlike the moral dilemma of buying used CDs of active contemporary bands and thereby not contributing to their capacity to make new music, proceeds from buying new books would only allow their families to enjoy more royalties and publishing companies to live off made commodities. The ironic thing is that even though I’m a graduate student in English, I probably know more about lesser-known ’90s indie rock than I do about lesser-known modernist poets. I’m sure there’s a Trouser Press Guide for this somewhere.

Between going to Atlanta for a wedding and being neck deep in research at the various libraries at Boston College, I’ve been busy, but I don’t know how well that translates to entertaining reports. I’d never been to Atlanta before and besides suffering in the sweltering heat, I don’t know if I “experienced” it in any notable way. The library research has been somewhat interesting, as I’ve spent a number of hours determining the degree of fame that minor literary figures received from scholarship to see if they would be worthy topics for my annotated bibliography. Finding that certain degree of fame—not as big as National Skyline, not as small as Days in December—is a bizarre process.

Through my travels in the stacks of the BC libraries, I noticed that Anthony Cronin, who wrote a biography of Flann O’Brien called No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O’Brien, is also a noted poet. (He also wrote a biography of Samuel Beckett that I should check out at some point.) I took his Collected Poems out early this week and enjoyed what I skimmed. Last night I happened to find a signed, used copy of said book at Brookline Booksmith. I typically don’t care much about rare editions or signed copies, but since I just spent a few hours in the rare books library hearing about signed editions and inscriptions, I figured that ten bucks was hardly an exorbitant price to pay. As it turns out, that’s on the absolute low-end of any online listings I found.

I picked up two somewhat recent math-/post-rock hybrids, Russian Circles’ Enter and the Timeout Drawer’s Alone EP, at the usually frustrating Newbury Comics. (I have a rant about how Boston record stores make me long for Parasol, Reckless, and Vintage Vinyl, but I’ll save that for another day.) Russian Circles frequently sound like the logical midpoint between Pelican and Explosions in the Sky, and though they never quite reach the heights of either band, Enter is a consistent, muscular debut. I hadn’t heard anything from the Timeout Drawer since I received their debut, A Record of Small Histories, as a promo back in the day, but I saw some positive press and downloaded it. Thankfully, they have moved past the “instrumental Cure” sound of that era, choosing a better balance between aggressive post-rock and their past synthetic urges. Semi-epic opener “Man Must Breathe” is the obvious highlight, but the rest of the EP is solid and the video from a song from their previous record is well done.

Of course, if any record store in the Boston area stocked Mock Orange records, I would gladly forgo purchasing the above book and records in order to pick up the excellent First EP or Mind Is Not Brain. Jon pines for The Record Play, but there are some fantastic songs on these records. The jury’s still out for the split with the Band Apart, but I harbor no illusions of ever finding that.

The NHL Playoffs have been a mixed bag this year. I’m not going to complain too much, since they are actually going on, but the final four seems like a worst-case scenario for the league’s newfound salary cap–enforced parity. For all of the griping sportswriters did in covering Calgary and Tampa Bay in the 2004 finals, those teams featured Martin St. Louis, Jarome Iginla, Miikka Kiprusoff, Vincent Lecavalier, and Nikolai Khabibulin, among others. These names may not roll off the non-fan’s tongue like Gretzky or Lemiuex, but they are star players nevertheless. Who’s left among the final four teams this year? Chris Pronger, Michael Peca, Chris Drury, Daniel Briere, Teemu Selanne, Scott Niedermayer, Erik Staal, Doug Weight. I have nothing against any of these players—Pronger and Niedermayer are certainly among the top defensemen in the league—but this league needs a Thornton, a Jagr, a Crosby, or an Ovechkin to put on an absolute show and pull fans back. I don’t care if Ovechkin is playing for Moose Jaw; if he’s on a team good enough to be in the finals, sports fans would take notice and start watching games. I love the heart and timely scoring of Chris Drury, but he is the league’s most electrifying player.

The other solution is for a big city—e.g., New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles—to actually make it to the finals, thereby meriting national coverage. I look back to the Rangers’ Cup run in 1994 and to the 1993 finals appearance for the Kings for times when those outside of the loyal cadre of hockey fanatics cared about the playoffs. I’m sick of people heralding the excitement of playoff hockey and then admitting to not watching any games, primarily because they don’t care about Buffalo, Edmonton, Carolina, or Anaheim and aren’t pulled in by the hype over a single player. Anyone who’s watched a Buffalo game should enjoy their speed, their heart, their creativity, but unfortunately, a good product isn’t necessarily going to come with an audience.

I can’t say that I particularly enjoy watching professional basketball, but there’s a definite benefit from being such a star-oriented team sport. Not every star pulls fans in—see Tim Duncan—but the effect of LeBron James’ stellar first playoff appearance has been noticed in higher playoff ratings. Cleveland may not be New York or Los Angeles, but the NBA system allows the city to matter far less than the player, if the player is a dominant star. Conversely, the Knicks are better at being a complete failure than any team in the NHL, constantly generating headlines and debates. Furthermore, the good teams stay in the NBA playoffs. The Spurs lost, but they lost to the Mavericks, the second best team in their conference. Every higher seed in the Western Conference lost their first-round match-up in the NHL playoffs. If this happened in the NBA (so unbelievably unlikely), David Stern would absolutely lose it.

Meanwhile, Gary Bettman manages to spin any event positively (well, maybe not the cancellation of an entire season or the Todd Bertuzzi debacle), so I can only imagine that a press release about the “fresh blood” in the finals is forthcoming. I’m rooting for the Sabres at this point, thankful that Drury is no longer on the hated Avalanche, but this season appears to be headed for a whimpering, not thunderous close. There is no national cry for a long-awaited rectifying of the Sabres’ finals loss to the Stars. The Oilers have won more than enough Cups in relatively recent memory and lack the urge for a Cup for the Maple Leafs or Habs. Even if the Ducks make a miraculous comeback against the Oilers, half of their local fan base still won’t catch the games on TV. And the Hurricanes must become a yearly power for a Cup victory to be anything other than a passing fad.

The rule changes have been somewhat effective in putting the emphasis back on scoring and skating, but it hasn’t fixed everything. It’s hard to ignore how effective the Oilers’ trap has been or how quickly they’ll slide into it (a one-goal lead to start the third period). I’d hate to think that this is the second coming of the 1995 New Jersey Devils, a team that sadly dictated the style of play for teams lacking offensive firepower. The frequency of penalty calls shouldn’t be a permanent trend, if players finally allow those tendencies to leave their systems. But if tons of penalties continue to be called, they must be the right calls. I’ve seen completely innocuous plays be whistled down, while infractions leading directly to goals (specifically, Ryan Smyth toppling over Toskala without help from the Sharks defense, allowing Samsonov access to the top shelf) have been ignored. Enforcing new standards takes compliance from both players and referees, which won’t happen overnight. I’m excited to see how NHL playoff games are played three years from now, but right now, they’re comprised of equal parts frustration and excitement.

The subtext to this entry is that my team, the Detroit Red Wings, bombed out of the first round, preempting a dream ending to Steve Yzerman’s career. At this point, I’m somewhat used to the Wings either winning the Cup, running into a blazing team, or merely not showing up for their first-round match, and I wasn’t sure whether the Oilers deserved the credit or the Wings deserved the blame for the outcome of the series. Yzerman’s injury had surprising impact—the Wings lost the 2OT game after his exit (despite appearing to win it on a Justin Williams magic trick), upon his return he was the best player on the ice—but much of the blame went to Manny Legace instead of the other offensive players who didn’t step up their games in the absence of their captain. Granted, Legace isn’t a long-term answer, particularly given the number of young goaltenders who have blossomed in this year’s playoffs, but his work in the final few games should have been enough to win those games. My dream scenario is that the Wings manage to steal one of the Ducks’ young goalies (Giguere’s stock rose with his win tonight, but hopefully he’ll be on the block anyway), Yzerman comes back for one more go at it, Jiri Fischer is cleared to play, and another young player steps up on the third or fourth lines for additional scoring, but the far more likely scenario is that none of those things occur. The Wings did an excellent job of filling in the gaps after the lockout ended, but it may be difficult to acquire a starting goalie, a power forward, and a top-four defenseman with the limitations of the salary cap.

Alright Blockbuster, now I’m annoyed. After mailing the Madagascar disc disguised as The Maltese Falcon (since rented from a physical Blockbuster store) for the second time, I got an e-mail stating that I had mailed them back the wrong DVD. I called them within forty minutes of receiving that e-mail, but I nevertheless received my animated albatross in the mail today, with a post-it note explaining how this wasn’t their DVD. Nice try, Blockbuster. You’re not pawning this one off on me. This situation hasn’t affected the shipment of my usual allotment of three films, but it has assured me that the Madagascar lobby is more influential than I ever imagined.